Volume 1: Path - [Envy Arc]
Chapter 53: Envy
"Oh, shit, call the deacon; the envy is leaking out of the boy's body." A priest shouted to inform the deacon. The deacon went to rest, as he was the one who had done more work than anyone, and he is an old man in his 60s with white hair coming on his head and his black eyes with wrinkles.
The deacon, who had sensed it immediately, ran inside; he was just sitting outside on a chair. While talking to the city lord's family.
"You idiots, what type of things have you done to him that caused emotions to leak despite being locked up?" The Deacon was super angry at the City Lord's family because, in his many years as a Deacon and Priest, he had never seen something like this before. He was genuinely angry from the moment he saw the hatred, but he had to first do his job to purify. But when he came inside and saw the emotion of envy that was leaking at a frightening speed, it made him realize the emotion of envy he saw was far less than what he had seen.
The deacon, before he took rest, checked the mind space to see if there was any leak or not, and there was none, but now the leak is happening. It only means that the amount of envy in his mind is so huge that it can't be contained in his mind space.
'Now, I understand why it didn't leak previously; the hatred was suppressing the envy and causing it to be compressed. And the reason for this boy becoming envious is that the harder one tries to suppress it, the more powerful the backlash is going to be. That is why the revelation said in the future in this place, there is going to be a demon that will be born, and it is going to harm the entire world if not subdued before it awakens.
'Now, I get why the revelation said it like this. This is going to be insanely difficult; I should just kill him. Sorry, Mother, I have to kill him to not let the demon be awakened in this world.' He thought as he took out his sword, "It is a one-sided blade," and he pulled it out from his waist, and he slashed the sword at Zelus. The sword didn't release anything out, and this is from others' perspective, but from the Deacon's perspective, the slash was going towards where the mind is, and it is the brain, and the slash was called "Mind Slash."
He could just kill Zelus, but it is useless since the problem is with the mind and soul, and the soul and mind are connected, just like how the physical body and brain are important to each other. The mind is important to the soul. That is why the deacon is targeting the soul, not the physical body, but in this world, no one has the ability to harm souls except a rank 5 awakener, and the reason for it is that the deacon doesn't know he himself is still a rank 3.
The attack only targets the mind; once the mind is broken, then that will lead to insanity, but this mind slash, which targets the mind, goes directly into mind space without harming the mind space and directly attacking the soul palace, which is the place the soul rests. The Slash can be controlled, which is the reason it didn't even hurt anything in the mind space.
The slash caused the soul palace to collapse; the soul palace, which was a big light ball, started to crack as it fell down; the soul inside the soul palace came out; and when it came out, a slash was coming directly at it.
But then the envy in the mind space blocked the attack from hitting Zelus's soul as it deflected the attack back to its owner. The attack, of course, didn't hit back at Deacon. Since the deacon has complete control over the mind attack, he slashed.
"Are you also coming to harm me? How many people are going to torture me? Why don't you all just kill me or at least give me the power so that I could live a life that could let me live in peace?" Zelus roared angrily, which caused his own mind space to shake.
The envy energy in the mid-space started to go into Zelus's soul at an astonishing speed. The mind attacks from the Deacon are not working at all; all of them are getting blocked by the envy in the mind space. Despite not being able to do anything to the soul, he could still slash the connection the envy emotion has with Zelus, but the emotion is too thick to slash.
'Since it has come to this, I should at least try killing his physical body. Even though a soul is a mysterious thing with a physical body, how long can a soul wander around?' He slashed the head of the physical body; the head was severed as blood started to pour out of the neck.
The envy emotion stopped as all of it suddenly vanished into thin air. All the priests fell on the ground; they were purifying the emotion that was leaking out of the body. They used up all their ley energy, and right now they are dried up completely.
"Don't be relaxed; we don't know what is going to happen. Go and call the head bishop." The deacon immediately shouted to one of the priests.
That priest immediately took out his phone from his pocket as he walked out of the room.
Just as they were all looking towards the corpse, the corpse started to tremble as the shadow of the corpse started to come out of the ground and started attaching itself to the body.
The deacon didn't wait for the transformation to finish; he slashed his sword, adding Leym energy onto the sword just like how he did previously when slashing the neck of Zelus.
The Shadow was cut down by the deacon as the head fell back down again. Before the deacon could slash another time, the shadow this time lashed onto the deacon; it was fast, super fast, enough for the deacon to be caught off guard.
'I have never seen something like this before; I need to get out of this place so others can't suffer.' He felt he was going to be eaten, so he wanted to at least go somewhere far and self-destruct to protect his subordinates so that they wouldn't get caught in the explosion.
But his legs were the first thing that was covered with shadow. He can't move. Just then, as if he had gained insight, he used a technique. Since his element is mind, he used his mind technique on himself to give orders to himself to move away from this place. That one move used all of his remaining Leym energy. He could have used it on the shadow, but he didn't think it would work because even the mind slash didn't get hit, but was blocked by the envy emotion, so how would that work on the shadow?
So, he used the mind control on his own mind, and with himself getting hit by the technique, all thoughts vanished, leaving only "get out of this place."
His legs moved; slowly he started taking a step, two, three, and as time increased, the shadow was also taking control of the body, and the deacon was also moving. He had already moved out of the castle and was in the backyard of the castle.
His movement suddenly stopped because his consciousness was slipping away due to the shadow covering his whole body and starting to eat his body and soul.
If it only affected the body, there wouldn't be any issues, but affecting even the soul means affecting the mind too, and the mind is the place where all thoughts and consciousness stay. That is why the deacon's consciousness is slipping away.
'I need... to... go…' He thought about moving away from here, but his consciousness faded away as it was consumed by the shadow.
The Shadow immediately turned into the deacon and stole everything the deacon had. Whether it was the mind element or even the appearance.
"Now, this body is mine, hehehe. I finally have the power to be how I want. From today onwards until the day I kill the gods myself, I will not stop." By looking at the sky, he roared as he looked around; noticing he was in the backyard, he looked at the wall of the castle, which was broken.
The deacon broke the wall and jumped down here to the backyard to move away faster.
A priest was looking at Zelus, who is in the deacon's body; the priest's eyes are trembling in fear. The priest saw a smirk on the deacon, then the priests suddenly fell onto the ground.
Then from the shadow of the priest who fell onto the ground, the deacon came out. He looked at the other priests; before they could even take a step, they had fallen down onto the ground.
"This power is amazing; with this I can get anything I want in this world, hahahaha." Zelus laughed as he looked at all the people who were on the ground; he saw the body of this old man had a lot of wrinkles, and he didn't like it, so he wanted to choose another body.
"Let's take my big brother's body; he has all the qualities I want to have."
As he muttered out, he looked at the hallwaywhere his father was captured under a spell with water, but with the priest who locked him up being killed with Zelus using a mind attack, the lock was released.
The Lord, seeing the situation, immediately ran to the deacon's legs and started to beg, "Sir, please leave us alone. Please forgive us for the mistake. You can take that brat anywhere you want; we don't care. Just leave us alone."
These guys still don't know that the deacon's body was taken over and don't even know why the deacon killed his own priests. But to survive, he has to beg him.
Zelus didn't say anything; his face was expressionless as he looked at his father, and his father locking his eyes with Zelus made Zelus's father fall to the ground, and he spread his mental strength out with leym energy mixed in it as he killed every single one of the family.
He took the body of his big brother and took the appearance and physique, causing him to have a beautiful white face with white hair and green eyes.
"This is wonderful."
[End Of Chapter 53]